Chroma Team Revised

Regular readers of this blog may remember that my game, Chroma Team VS The Terrorlights, was a finalist in this year's Game Chef. I received a lot of good feedback and suggestions on the game and this weekend I sat down and started revising the game. You can view the current version of the game here, and I have kept the original Game Chef entry around for those curious about such things.

The revised game grew has grown by almost a thousand words and includes rule clarifications, math fixes and a few less grammar mistakes and typos. Of course, that doesn't account for anywhere near the increased word count. What does? I'm glad you asked.

City Creation

Chroma Team now feature a city creation aspect. During character creation the players will define important locations of the city they are protecting and lay them out on the table. Threats now target specific locations and if heroes aren't careful those threats will spread across the city.

Threat Proliferation

As mentioned above, if heroes completely fail at overcoming threats those threats will move out across the city and wreak havoc. This new mechanic has the added benefit of giving the push your luck rolls more teeth as well as making the aftermath phase of the game less depressing because heroes can have, at most, only a single failure per location where previously there was no limit.

Super Powers

Heroes now have access to super powers/special abilities. This takes the form a of a simple mechanic that allows players to exchange transformation energy for reducing threats.

Transformation

The changes to the way threats work and allowing the addition of super powers meant that transformation would no longer work as written. I altered transformation so that instead of gathering energy to reach a transformation state the heroes instead increase their odds of a successful transformation with each threat they overcome.


I think that Chroma Team is definitely an improved game from the original Game Chef entry, but I think it still needs a lot of playtesting and tweaking before it gets to where I would like it to be. Again, you can get Chroma Team Revised here and, as always, I want to hear from you if you play it.

Categories: Chroma Team, Game Design, Kaiju, Sentai

Game Chef 2013: Chroma Team reaches the finals!

The peer reviewing and nomination process for Game Chef 2013 is over and the finalists have been announced. The dust has settled and ten* games are going before the four expert judges and this year I am astounded to say that my entry is one of those ten.

My goofy little game, that was written stealthily in the middle of the night whilst my wife slept and in spurts as I moved around my home evading wet paint** and moving furniture, was deemed good enough to go to the next round. I'm surprised and honoured that my fellow designers liked the game enough to nominate it.

Whenever I finish a game for one of these contests (be it Game Chef, 24 Hour or something else) I am always left feeling sour. By the time I hit that 'submit' button I despise my game.  I'm always left thinking it's the worst thing ever committed to digital ink. As time passes I warm back up to it, but those first couple of weeks all I have is criticism for myself: This time around was no different and even as I write this I am still in that phase of my creative process. The positive (and constructive) feedback has been quite the shock to my post-design negativity bubble and learning that my game was nominated for the next round is the pinprick that burst it.

Somebody pinch me.

*All look to be interesting games and I will be reading my way through them while we all bide our time nervously until June 12th.
**Which in retrospect might have influenced my decision to use colour so heavily in the game.

Categories: Chroma Team, Game Chef, Game Chef 2013, Game Design

Game Chef 2013: Chroma Team vs. The Terrorlights

The design part of Game Chef 2013 is now complete and I am already hard at work on the the peer reviewing phase. I have already shared my initial brainstorming session as well as teased a character sheet, but now that my entry has been submitted it is time to actually share the fruits of my labour.

How's that for an ugly cover?

Chroma Team vs. The Terrorlights

I went with a goofy game this year and built a game about a team of brightly coloured super heroes fighting giant monsters. I named my super hero team the Chroma Team because Power Rangers was already taken and Rainbow Warriors sounded like it would be a game about gay rights activists.

The general premise of CTvT is that a mysterious force (Terrorlights) is sicking giant monsters on the most populated cities in the world. As members of Chroma Team, the players must kick some giant monster butt while also keeping innocents safe and their identities secret. I think I nailed the first two parts of that, but I don't think I really accomplished much on the secret identity front (at least not mechanically).

You can read/download the Game Chef 2013 copy of Chroma Team vs. The Terrorlights here. As always, I would love to hear from you if you read or play the game.

Categories: Chroma Team, Game Chef, Game Chef 2013, Game Design, Kaiju

Game Chef 2013: Character Sheet Teaser

The clock is ticking on Game Chef 2013 and submissions are due when it is no longer May 26th anywhere in the world. Naturally, with less than 48 hours left on the clock I have decided that my time is better spent updating my blog than actually working on the game. It's all part of the creative process, I swear!

I have stepped away from designing and proofreading to tease the character sheet for my entry and without further ado, here it is:

I could explain everything on this sheet to you, but I think it will be more fun to leave it up to your imagination until I do up a proper blog post on my entry to the competition. I've stuck fairly closely to my original vision in the brainstorming post and maybe you can glean some hints from there. I will also say that the name of the game has changed to Chroma Team VS The Terrorlights, make of that what you will.

Categories: Character Sheets, Chroma Team, Game Chef, Game Chef 2013, Game Design, Teaser

Game Chef 2013: Ingredients & Brainstorming

Game Chef is back for 2013 and I am already scratching my head and staring at the ingredients. I have participated in Game Chef twice before, 2010 and 2011, but have never won or placed as a finalist (historically I have done better with the 24/48 hour jams).

This year's ingredients come in the form of five images, the first of which is the theme.

I'm not really sure what to make of this image. The first thing that sprang to mind was an elevator, but the only thing I can thematically link to elevators is heaven/hell and business. I'm really not interested in doing another afterlife themed game for Game Chef as I did one back in 2010 with In Between.

Some other things: teleporting, grow/shrink, alien abduction, glowing eyes. If you turn it upside down it looks kind of like a sword

Brainfreeze, cold and calculating, elemental affinity, death/skeleton, train driving through snow, head cold, thinking about winter, paralysis/frozen in place. Upside down it looks like someone eating snow.

Worms, bad apples, parasitism, corruption, growth. Upside down the apple becomes a tree and the monstrous worm is still  a monstrous worm. The apple could refer to New York which would mean a giant worm is eating New York.

Armour/chainmail, diamonds, expensive clothing, status symbols. I guess it could be an anchor or some kind of weird pot if you look at it upside down.

Lanterns, shine light on/revealing, shadows, China, keep darkness away, hiding from light, film noir, beacons/being drawn to light.

I have done a game that used light/fire in the mechanics before, so I don't think I want to go that route again.

What am I Going to Do?

I have been staring at these images for about 24 hours now and a lot of the ideas I have been coming up with are too similar to games I have done in the past. I don't want to build mechanics around light or fire again and I don't want to do a game about the afterlife or death. I also don't really have much interest in doing a game around status, politics, castes or things of that ilk.

Looking back at the games I have made for competitions of the years it seems that I am often drawn to darker themes and horror. The same is true of this year's Game Chef. Most of my ideas involved dystopias, parasites, corruption, social climbing and so on. I am kind of sick of dark topics and this year I have decided that I am going to go in the opposite direction; I am going to interpret the ingredients and theme in the most off the wall and fun way that I can.

Attack of the Terrorlights

Glowing lights pulse in the night sky. They dance over the city until falling down and into the most ordinary of things. Destruction follows the lights. They are the Terrorlights, some kind of otherworldly force intent on the destruction of the earth. The creatures their light touches grow to massive size and become enraged, laying waste to everything around them.

Someone must stand up to the Terrorlights and their gargantuan creations and that someone is you. Players take on the role of members of the colorful Chroma Team, mighty defenders of earth with the power to grow (and shrink) in size to combat any threat.

 That's right, I am going Kaiju with this game which will be inspired by such classics as Kamen Rider and Power Rangers and the Terrorlights are a little bit like Mysterons.

I haven't put a lot of thought into mechanics for AotT yet, but I know that I want to include few core ideas.

1. I want the colour/pattern of player clothing to matter. If you wear a plaid shirt then you get to play the Plaid Ranger. What I think this means is that there will be a kind of class system where players match up their clothing and it gives them some abilities or powers. This is then paired with a choice of title like 'Ranger', 'Warrior' or 'Defender' to get their full sentai member code name.
2. I plan on using push your luck mechanics in this game. My thoughts are that the heroes can keep pushing forward when fighting giant monsters but if they push their luck too far they will damage the city or injure innocents.
3. I want the game to be a balance between giant monster battles and slice of life for the heroes. My idea is that we get to see the heroes struggle with the fallout of their actions when they push their luck too far and I also want to have some fun with the players hiding their secret identities from friends and family.

I have just over a week to make something out of this and, luckily for me, this year Game Chef falls on a long weekend.

Categories: Brainstorming, Chroma Team, Game Chef, Game Chef 2013, Game Design, Kaiju, Sentai

The Pale Forest (My 2012 RPG Geek 24 RPG)

The dust has settled and this year's 24 Hour RPG Competition at RPG Geek is now over. I threw my hat into the ring this time around with a game called The Pale Forest, but with 37 other great entries I didn't expect to win (and I didn't). That honour goes to the much more popular (and presumably handsome) RPG blogger Lowell Francis.

If you are unfamiliar with the special kind of "fun" that is the 24 hour RPG, let me explain it to you. A bunch of crazy game designers get together and decide that it would be a good idea to create a game with no prior work and no outside help in just 24 hours. There is no stopping the clock, once you start you have exactly 24 hours to finish the thing. It's a mad dash and a lot of fun provided you have a masochistic streak.

This was my first time entering a 24 hour RPG competition and I really didn't put as much of the 24 hours into it as I would have liked. I think my break down was 1-2 hours brainstorming, 3 hours designing and then throwing away my first idea, 3 hours on my second idea and 1 hour layout. Then probably another 1-2 hours of  hanging out in the official thread and otherwise procrastinating when I should have been working. All things said, I probably spent 10 of my 24 hours actually at my computer "working" on the game.

You can view/download The Pale Forest here.

My cover design skills aren't great, but this
one was terrible even by my standards.

Now that the contest is over I'm allowed to talk about my game a little. It's not actually against the rules to do so, but there's a kind of gentleman's agreement not to for fear of influencing voters. Here are some rapid-fire thoughts on The Pale Forest:

• I went with a kind of mad-libs style of character creation, mainly because I couldn't think of a way to marry character creation with game play. I'm not particularly happy with it.
• The big mechanical idea I wanted to play with was a built in time limit and a mechanical resources that run out. I accomplished this with a spindown die that represents health/gear/sanity and so on. It decreases with each scene and action and players gamble it to overcome obstacles. I think there is more that can be done with the idea, but I'd need more than 24 hours to truly make it work. I'm really interested in the feedback on this one.
• I was also interested in experimenting with gambling as a mechanic and I tried to tie that with the resources. I like the idea that players set their own risk/reward as it frees things for the GM and makes for an unpredictable game.
• When the aforementioned resource runs out something bad happens. I think the game is going to be rather CoC-esque in that there is rarely a happy ending.
• The game is very freeform with the only guidance being in random tables and a few paragraphs of exposition. With the mad-lib character creation someone should be able to get it up and playing in less than 10 minutes. I'm worried that there might not be enough guidance, but an experienced GM should be able to accomplish a lot with just the random tables and the way the gambling/resource mechanic works.

I don't think that I will be returning to this game to flesh it out and otherwise improve it. The reason? I don't really like it. I like the setting and I like the ideas that birthed the game, but I don't really like the result. I will continue to experiment with gambling mechanics with Rollplay Engine and I'm not convinced that a limited resource really works in an RPG without giving it more teeth and turning it into a competitive or very short game.

If you do end up reading or trying The Pale Forest please let me know how it goes. I am always curious about people's experiences and I haven't even had a chance to play the game myself.

Categories: 24 hour rpg, Age of Ravens, Game Design, RPG Geek, The Pale Forest

Tug-of-Adventure

I have been thinking about adventures as a game of tug-of-war. On one side is the goal, the thing that the adventurers are trying to accomplish. On the other side are the goals of the aggressor or what happens if the adventurers are not successful in their venture. In the middle of all this lies the adventure.

Click to enlarge.

Imagine if everything that a character did (or didn't) moved the tug of war in one direction or another. If the  heroes successfully repelled some raiding orcs that would move things one notch in favour of a positive outcome or overall success for the heroes.

Now imagine there are some zones or markers along the field. Each of these zones represents a change of overall circumstances or attitudes. As the villain gets dragged through these zones they might become more and more desperate, resulting in more dangerous and risky schemes in an attempt to drag things back in their favour. On the other hand, if the adventurers get dragged towards the Negative Outcome their own circumstances worsen. Allies die or abandon them, traitors appear, evil poisons the land, monster attacks become more frequent and so on.

You could also apply positive effects in the zones. As the heroes draw closer and closer to their ultimate goal then perhaps more and more people flock to their cause and the less control over the world the villain has.

What is the point of all this?

I came up with this idea as a way to give an overall structure to a game of Rollplay. In my playtest of the game I found that since players could create any obstacle or circumstance they wanted in each scene that this lead to a disjointed, somewhat manic and unfocused narrative. This can be fun in its own right, but isn't really the overall feel I was going for.

What I hope to accomplish with a mechanic like this adventure tug-of-war I hope to create an overarching narrative in an improvised game. By using this mechanic a win and lose condition enter the game and consequences affect the story on a macro level. Using this method I can have players define the adventure or goal at the beginning of a game, something like "prevent Sauron from conquering Middle Earth".

Other uses

While I had originally conceived this as a mechanic for the Rollplay Engine, I think it could also work very well as a way to move through an adventure module for other role playing games. I envision a non-linear adventure with a primary antagonist of some kind. Any number of zones could be placed on the adventure "line" and each could be associated with a number of different encounters. As the players move back and forth along the line the GM selects (or randomly chooses) an encounter from whatever zone they have moved into.

There is some risk of the players getting caught in a loop where they bounce back and forth and end up running out of new encounters for a specific zone. To deal with this a time mechanic might be added. A villain really only needs to slow down a group of adventurers until they can complete their plan. If the group runs out of time then the villain achieves their goal, but this may not be a complete victory if the players are far enough along the line towards a heroic success.

I suppose a GM might also use this mechanic as a way to track progress on in any RPG. It could be useful just for determining the attitudes of a villain to the player characters or keeping track of progress towards defeating a villain in an improvised game.

Categories: Adventures, Game Design, Game Mastering, Rollplay Engine

The Rollplay Engine

About a month ago I posted about eschewing character sheets in favour of managing everything through dice. I have been mulling the idea over and over the recent long weekend I whipped together a basic RPG system built around the concept. I am tentatively naming the resulting game the Rollplay Engine. It is a silly name, but also a relatively apt description. It is also a bit of a cheeky nod at the term "rollplaying", which is one of the few hobby-related words that make me want to strangle my monitor.

A lazy mockup of a die used by the Rollplay Engine.

What I have written is a basic system using fantasy archetypes which we can call Fantasy Rollplay for now. I have used fantasy archetypes for the basis of the system because I find them easy to work with. If I find that the system is fun then I will probably expand it into other genres. Actually, when I was writing this I thought that the game would work very well adapted to a mech theme. Right now the game is very much in a draft form, but if you take a look (or play the game) please let me know your thoughts.

I should note that I have included dice values next to things in the rules because I haven't actually made any custom dice yet (I am planning to do this with stickers). To play this game you will either need to refer to these rules or write the numbers out on cards or pieces of paper. 

Some Design Notes

Spotlight and Opposition Players

I decided to make the Rollplay Engine one of those artsy story games that feature shifting narration responsibilities. There are a couple of reasons for this:

• Narrative controls seemed a natural fit for a system that gives players limited options. By using narrative control the game becomes more about taking the options the dice give you and narrating something fun than it does about rolling to see what your character does. It puts the control back in the hands of the players instead of leaving things at the mercy of the dice.

• I wanted the game to be something that could be picked up and played with no preparation. In a game that is about improvised narration the GM role was already reduced, so it made sense to remove it entirely as a requirement

Despite the game defaulting to having no player wearing the GM/Storyteller mantle in the traditional sense, there is no reason why a group of players couldn't select someone to take on that role. The game should work fine with a single player acting as the Opposition for every scene.

Difficulty Isn't so Difficult

I think this is somewhere where I really veered off into unfamiliar territory. Most role playing games, if not all of them, have some kind of difficulty mechanic. Players need to roll over or under some target number or they need a certain number of successes or they have a percent chance of being successful at something. The only games that do not do things this way are the ones with bidding and similar narrative control mechanics, but the driving force behind these mechanics is in narrative competition.

With Rollplay I knew that I needed some kind of difficulty mechanic some way for players to succeed or fail at what they are trying to do. I came up with the difficulty dice. The idea with these is that the dice represent a chance for something to go wrong, which is something I found to be much more flexible and easy to manage than a bunch of contextual values. I then mixed things up further by having players set their own difficulty in a kind of gamble mechanic. The more difficulty dice they bet the greater the narrative reward.

If players manage their dice well and are able to tackle any complications that the difficulty dice throw their way then they should be able to overcome any challenge. Cowardly players can always gamble the minimum and be all but assured success, but a minimal success like that would be... well, minimal.

Expandable

There are a number of different classes and backgrounds listed in the rules I linked above, but the beauty of Rollplay is that more can be made with such little effort. New faces and narrative keys can be created and arranged as desired. During the very first playtest of the game we whipped up a new background (craftsman) in less than a minute for a player that wanted their character to have worked as a smith before they went adventuring.

First Playtest Observations

I playtested this game with my regular group of players last Wednesday. It went surprisingly well. Overall things flowed quite naturally from scene to scene and the constant barrage of obstacles set a kind of manic pace. 

• A flowchart laying out the game structure would be useful. I wasn't having problems with it, but I wrote the damn thing. I think it would have been very helpful for the other players to have it written down somewhere.

• We tried different was of selecting the opposition, different XP mechanics and even different ways of deciding which player narrated what. All seemed to work equally well in practice, with the exception of randomly determining Opposition. One of the players kept getting left out when we tried that and I don't think that is a good thing.

• It is clear that the advancement/XP mechanic needs work. Right now it isn't particularly satisfying and I don't like needing to write down XP on scrap paper. Rewarding a single die at the end is also pretty boring as the players seem eager to have a more fast and furious approach to advancement.

• The injury/hits mechanic also needs more thought. Right now it seems simultaneously too lethal and not lethal enough. I'll need to think about this one.

• One player expressed that they would like to be able to lower their chance of success in exchange for trading their Narrative Key for something they didn't roll. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. It is worth considering. What I might do is group Narrative Keys into categories that can be swapped in this manner. For example, Might and Melee are similar enough that a player could trade one for the other at the cost of adding additional difficulty dice.

• It might be a good idea to define an overarching adventure somehow and have "successful" scenes push towards some eventual conclusion. During the playtest there was no end goal and we/the players jumped around from minor conflict to minor conflict without hitting a nice flow.

Categories: Dice, Game Design, Rollplay Engine, RPG

Fudge Dice & Hex Crawling

You might not know this about me, but I love a good hexcrawl. I think there is something to be said for a game in which the players just strike out across the world to see what they might find. If you're not familiar with hexcrawling then head over to The Welsh Piper, he has done a great overview.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been racing to put together a zombie hack for the always enjoyable Fate System. One thing that I really wanted to put into the game was some way to put together a city for survivors to wander their way through. This thought lead me to placing a hex overlay over top my city of residence and to the realm of hexcrawling.

The Collaborative Spirit of Fate

One of the really special things about Fate and the various games that use Fate is that they have a strong collaborative spirit. In Dresden Files the players populate a city with plot elements and characters. In Diaspora they create the very planets that they will visit. Just using a random table to populate hexes doesn't mesh with this collaborative philosophy that Fate has.

If a game of Fate is going to stay true to this collaborative spirit then the players need to be more involved with the hexcrawl.

  Hexcrawlin' With Fudge Dice

1. The players should choose a starting hex. This is their hex of origin, where they start the game from or where their Headquarters is.
2. Count the hexes adjacent to the origin and build a pool of fudge dice. The pool should have 3 fudge dice for each hex.
3. Roll all of the gathered dice.
4. Each player, in turn, selects a die and places it into an adjacent hex or notes the face value in the hex. Repeat until all of the dice have been used.
5. Each of the adjacent hexes should now have a number of +, -, and ■ in them.

You should now have something like this:

You may want to click to enlarge.

The blue hex in the middle is our origin/hq hex. In case you're curious, there is a university at that location. I've highlighted the surrounding hexes in red. Unless you're at the edge of a map, one of the hexes is unreachable, or one of the hexes is already explored you are always going to have 6 of them. That means most of time the group will need to roll 18dF. You might want to do things in such a way that each player rolls 1dF on their turn until 18dF have been rolled if you don't have enough dice.

I went and rolled this out and, as luck would have it, I rolled six of each face. I placed them each into different hexes, as you can see above.

The last step is to define what those results actually mean. I suggest that each result corresponds to a fact of some kind about the hex. + results are things that are potentially beneficial to the player. - results are the opposite, potentially negative things. ■ are neutral, something that could go either way or that is indifferent. You may wish to make  ■ results environmental factors. Players can combine like results together to write a fact that is more "powerful" or significant.

For a great collaborative experience you should write out these facts as a group, but if you want a more surprising game you could have the GM fill out the facts secretly. If you would like a middle ground then you could opt to have  ■  results be GM secrets and allow the players to fill in + and - normally.

Facts for the above map (starting with the topmost hex and proceeding clockwise):

1. There are friendly survivors here. There is a food source here. One of the friendly survivors is a carrier. There are many scavenged out buildings.
2. The coast guard regularly returns here to rescue survivors. The roads here have been barricaded.
3. A friendly group of survivors is trapped in an apartment building here. There are damaged boats here.
4. Zombie hoards roam this hex in large numbers.
5. There is a hospital here. The hospital is occupied by a dangerous cult. A burst water main floods the streets.
6. Zombies roam this hex. A fire has damaged many of the buildings here.

I stuck with the zombie apocalypse theme mentioned above, but this method could work with any setting. Actually, I think it would work much better with other settings. Zombie apocalypses are somewhat limited in their options.

You could also go a more traditional route and have positive, negative, and neutral encounter tables that you roll on after the values have been distributed on the hexes. This would require coming up with a new set of tables for every crawl, unless you made them very generic.

Categories: Adventure, Fate, Fudge, Game Design, Hexcrawl, Welsh Piper, Zombie

Characters as Dice

Today I was thinking about dice. Specifically, I was thinking about ways to use dice in an RPG that I haven't seen before. One of the most credible of these ideas was to use the dice as the character sheet, at least to an extent.

The Idea

I envision a character being made up of a handful of dice, probably six-sided. Each face on a die could represent a different aspect of the character, such as a skill or ability. 

Imagine a die flattened out:

   1
   2
   5
2 3 4
   6

Each side could be assigned a different icon which translates to a character skill or element of the character. If you can't get stickers to do this with then you could always write out on a piece of paper what each side means.

For example:

1 Stealth
2 Knife
3 Knife
4 Acrobatics
5 Acrobatics
6 Persuasion

A character has one of these dice for each level that they are. They roll 1 or more of these dice and the corresponding face determine their action/outcome

The GM can set difficulty in the number of faces that need to come up across all dice rolled with the desired effect. For example, if a player is trying to defeat a monster the GM can state it is a difficulty 2 monster, meaning there needs to be two matching faces. The player rolls 2d6 and gets Knife twice. They narrate that they stabbed the monster, defeating it. If they rolled persuasion twice they might have narrated that they were able to talk their way out of the situation or distract the monster for a turn.

Players choosing which of their dice to roll in any given situation is part of the strategy of the game. When building their character/leveling up they need to assign skills/abilities to their dice as well. So if one player were to place acrobatics on all the faces of one die they are guaranteed to always be at least somewhat successful if they role that die for acrobatics. Another player might spread acrobatics across 3 dice, two on each die. This character would be less likely to roll acrobatics in any given situation, but they have the potential of rolling up a larger set and thus beating more difficult challenges.

Powers/Sets

Further extending this system could be special abilities for characters that require a certain set or sequence to appear on rolled dice. For example if a character rolled 3d6 and got Stealth, Knife, and Acrobatics this might activate their Backstab power.

Complications

If a player doesn’t roll exactly what they want they could narrate their success, but incorporate a complication. The GM might also add in the complication depending on the group play style.

Races/Classes/Archetypes

With a dice system like this it is easy to implement things like Races or Classes. All you need to do is add another die to the character. An archetypal die might have predefined faces rather than player selected faces. After all, an elf is always an elf.

Using something like a racial die could be a good idea as it would give players an extra die to roll at the beginning of the game, assuming that 1 level = 1d6. Mind you, a starting character could always just have a number of bonus dice depending on the desired power level of the game.

Final Thoughts

You know, I really like this idea. I don't think I would like to play a regular game this way, but as a quick sit down and play kind of game I think it is a cool idea. It might be fun long term for groups that are more interested in narrative-based play, but for any group that likes numbers and mechanics I fear it would be a little too light to keep them engaged for long.

Categories: Dice, Game Design, Idea, RPG

A Game of Artifact Control (idea)

I had an idea for a card game today. I don't know what it is about me and card games, they're like an addiction. I don't know why I ever bother designing these because I don't have the resources to buy the necessary art to ever publish one. Here are my ideas anyway.

A Game of Artifact Control

There are objects of power in the universe. They do things that are unexplainable. Various people and factions want them for all manner of reasons. You are one of them.

The core of the game revolves around control of these artifacts. Factions clash as they try and recover, collect, destroy, and control these items. The game consists of two or more players facing off against each other, each bringing their own artifacts to the field. When one player no longer has any artifacts under their control they have lost.

Players come to the table with a deck of at least 60 cards as well as an artifact collection of 6 total artifacts. The artifact cards are each placed face down in a row in front of each player.

Mystical, Technological, and Financial resources are used to play cards. At the beginning of each players turn they choose one of these resources and places them on one of their Artifacts. These resources are usually represented by coloured beads (Financial = Yellow, Technological = Blue, Mystical = Red). Resources can be taken in any amount from the Artifacts to play cards, but to activate Artifact abilities/powers the resources need to have been placed on the Artifact in question. Resources are consumed when used and placed back in the shared pools they came from. On the first turn only the players distribute 3 resources among their artifacts, although they many not put more than one on each.

Resource control can be an alternate win condition for the game. If any one player is able to control all of a specific resource (Financial, Technological, or Mystical) then they win the game. To be clear, this means that none of the other players nor the common pool have any of the chosen resource.

Each turn a player may attack their opponents Artifacts with any Units that they have in play. These Units may be intercepted by Units that the defender control. The Unit with the least power in such a clash is destroyed. Equal powered Units are both destroyed. Multiple Units may intercept an attacker. If a Unit successfully attack an Artifact then resources equal to the Unit's Power are removed from the Artifact. Some Units specify a specific type of Resource that must be removed, if none is specified then the Defender chooses.

Artifacts

Each player has six Artifacts and all of them have their own powers and abilities. At the beginning of play they are placed face down in front of each player. Resources are assigned to artifacts each turn. Over the course of play the artifacts may be re-arranged, stolen or destroyed. If a player ever has control of all remaining Artifacts then they win the game.

To use an Artifact’s ability it must be revealed at the time of use. Flip it from face down to face up. It stays that way unless another ability or card is used to turn it face down or to shuffle the artifacts. Two Artifacts of the same name can not be in the face up position at the same time (unless otherwise noted).

An artifact can be destroyed using special operations or equipment cards or unit and artifact abilities. More commonly, they are destroyed by attacking them with units. A unit deals damage equal to its power as normal. For each point of power 1 resource is removed from the artifact. If there are no resources remaining it is destroyed and placed into the discard.

Deck Cards

Deck cards come in a number of different varieties. The three most common are Unit, Operations, and Equipment Cards.

Unit Cards are your troops on the ground. While they may have other uses, they are primarily used to defend your artifacts and attack/steal your opponents artifacts. Unit cards can be played by spending resources. The type of resource used to bring them into play depends on the unit and the faction it belongs. Units may have special abilities that can activated by spending resources.

Operations Cards are one time use tactics or effects that you can play by spending resources. They are things like calling in reinforcements, rearranging artifacts, and getting intel (revealing artifacts or an opponents hand).

Equipment Cards are just that, equipment. These are attached to Units to improve them in some way. The most common benefit of an equipment card is that it will add a special ability to a Unit.

Example Artifacts

Humming Scrap
Type: Alien Artifact
This mysterious piece of unidentifiable metal gives off a faint vibration despite having no power source.
Power Surge - Destroy all units attached to Humming Scrap and receive 2 Tech for each one destroyed this way.

Statue of Moloch
Type: Religious Artifact
This large statue contains 7 cabinets. Within each cabinet is a different sacrifice.
Sacrifice - During your turn you may sacrifice any Unit you control. The resource cost of the unit is placed on Statue of Moloch in the form of Mystical Resources. You may not sacrifice a Unit engaged in combat.

Example Units

Thieving Smoke
Type: Mystical Unit
Faction: Brotherhood of Smoke
It is well known that the Brotherhood can steal the unstealable. It is less known how they do it.
Power: 1 (Financial)
Special: When Thieving Smoke damages an Artifact place the lost resources on an Artifact that you control.
Special: Pay 1 Mystical to prevent Thieving Smoke from being intercepted.

Templar Knight
Type: Mystical Unit
Faction: Templars
The sword of a Templar Knight is feared by monsters everywhere.
Power: 2
Special: If Templar Knight enters combat with any Unit with "Monster" or "Beast" in its name then its power is 6.

Categories: Artifacts, Card Games, Game Design, Idea, Secret Societies

Ninjas & Nerf Swords

I was browsing through /r/rpg and I came across this thread asking for a simple resolution system that uses Nerf weapons instead of dice or some other randomizer. The twist? The mechanic can't be to actually fight with the weapons.

The person asking the question also presented what they wanted in the way of character stats:

I'm thinking of three stats - Magic, Cunning, and Brawn. I'm not sure what the three stats actually do at this point, but I'm thinking characters get to assign a 3, a 2, and a 1 to the three stats, prioritizing however they want to. Then, for each point in their stat, they can throw in something like an aspect of fate. So it looks like this:

Sarkar Dark-Eater Elven Warlock Magic: 3 Summoning, Brain-Eating, Creepy Dark Eyes Cunning: 2 Lying, Insulting Brawn: 1 Gut-Tearing

Being the person that I am, I couldn't resist taking a stab at this challenge. I whipped up this simple game in about 20 minutes.

Ninjas & Nerf Swords

Character Creation

Characters are defined by 3 stats: Magic, Cunning, and Brawn. They have 6 character points to distribute among the 3 stats. For each point they have in a stat they can apply one Aspect related to it. They can tag these Aspects for bonuses during play.

Ex: If a character has 3 Brawn then their Aspects might be Bulging Muscles, Built like a Brick House and Ox-like.

Aspects as Powers

Players may choose to define one or more of their Aspects as powers. If they do so the Aspects may not be tagged as described later in these rules. Instead the player defines the nature of the power. This could be something like raising the dead or being a "totally bad-ass backhanded axe-cleave that beheads any monster". A player may activate each of their powers only once per scene (as defined by the GM).

Resolution

Whenever there is need for resolution the GM decides on the difficulty. Based on the difficulty the GM selects an object to pitch at one of the players. The harder the difficulty the smaller the item and the crappier the pitch can be. The challenging player must hit the thrown object with their Nerf weapon. If a caster is using a Nerf gun place the target farther away from them. Players get a number of attempts to hit the target equal to the relevant stat. An assortment of different sized whiffle balls and stuffed animals would likely be best for this. You may also wish to play outside or in a large space free of things that could be broken.

Tagging Aspects

During any challenge that a player is involved in they may declare one of their Aspects relevant. This is called tagging. When they do so they can alter one thing about the difficulty of the challenge. For example, they may make the target bigger or demand that the GM pitch underhand. Alternatively, they can be granted 1 additional pitch/shot. Once an Aspect has been tagged it may not be tagged again until a new scene (as defined by the GM) has begun.

Character Health

Characters do not have health points. Instead, anytime they would take damage reduce one of their stats by 1. The reduced stat should reflect the kind of damage they took (Magical, Psychic/Emotional/Social, Physical). The player may avoid this damage by pounding back a beer (or some performing an embarrassing task if they are under age). If a stat would be reduced to 0 the character falls unconscious and may be revived by tagging a healing Aspect or a friendly NPC in a subsequent scene. If it falls below 0 the player should be ridiculed and forced to create a new character with a smaller, less fearsome weapon.

GM Challenge Rule

If the majority players believe that one of the GM's rulings is "bogus" they may select a champion to challenge the GM to a duel. The first to score 3 clean hits with a nerf weapon is declared the winner and a new rule is codified into the game. A player may not use a challenge to overturn an existing rule created in this manner.

The Anti-Power Rule

The GM may reduce the effectiveness of a power at any time for a single usage if it would cause narrative problems (such as gut-tearing the BBEG). When the GM does so they must give the affected player a +1 temporary stat bonus. This does not grant an additional Aspect. It is removed at the end of the scene. Players may challenge these rulings on an individual basis by challenging the GM (as above).

Sarkar Dark-Eater, Elven Warlock

Magic: 3
Cunning: 2
Brawn: 1

Tag Aspects: Creepy Dark Eyes, Lying, Insulting
Power Aspects:

1. Summoning - Summons a 1/1/1 demonic familiar to aid him for the remainder of the scene.
2. Brain-Eating - May consume the brain of a foe to restore 1 point in any stat. May learn one memory from the eaten brain.
3. Gut-Tearing - May designate a single previous attack by either himself or his familiar as "Gut-Tearing". This retroactively kills the target.

Categories: Game Design, Nerf, Ninjas and Nerf Swords, reddit, RPG

By Firelight: a campfire storytelling game.

UPDATE: You can read By Firelight: The Campfire Storytelling Game here. This post is about the original conception of the game.

Around two weeks ago I came across someone asking for suggestions for an RPG that they could play around a campfire. A lot of people were recommending games with few rules or dice needed to play, but to me that doesn't seem to capture that special something that telling tales around a campfire has. At the very least it doesn't take advantage of that magic.

This got me thinking. I already knew of one RPG designed for being played while hiking through the wilderness. It’s called Sherpa and it takes advantage of the changing surroundings as you make your way through a trail. I thought why not come up with something that takes advantage of a campfire in that same way? I typed up a reply that featured some quick brainstorming as well as a couple of suggestions. You can read it here if you are curious.

I really liked the quick little set of rules that had formed out of that comment and I’d be lying if I said the positive feedback didn’t encourage me to expand those initial ideas. That is exactly what I did. I took that initial set of ideas and I compiled them into a proper set of rules, changing things as needed.

The most important aspect of the game is that it incorporates the campfire right into the mechanics. It really would have been a shame to not use the fire since it was going to be there in front of the players anyway. I decided to use it in a kind of ritualized manner. Players are given pieces of paper with character traits on them and they are also given a paper cutout that represents their character. Traits are consumable and burned once used. Any harm that comes to their character results in pieces being torn from their cutout and being tossed into the flames. It’s simple, but I think really helps provide an atmosphere for the game.

Another thing I needed to consider and overcome for this game was that playing a game at night are not ideal for most traditional ways of playing RPGs. There probably won’t be a lot of flat and dry surfaces, light will be low, and outdoors there could be rain or wind causing all kinds of problems for things like character sheets. As someone that grew up in the Pacific Northwest I am intimately familiar with these conditions, so I wanted to make things easy on the players.

The first step was to remove character sheets. The character cut out doesn't have anything written on it. There is nothing to read so light is no problem. It is still paper and will be susceptible to wind and rain, but it won't be used unless it needs burning so it can easily be shoved in a pocket or held down by a stone. The same thing goes for the Traits, although they would all have a single thing written down on them.

Randomizers were the second problem. Dice were going to be a pain to use because the numbers could be difficult to read in the dark and without a large flat surface they would bounce all over the place. Cards had a similar issue, only they would also be susceptible to the elements. I thought about how this game would likely be played in the dark by the light of the fire and how burning things as a game mechanic was very ritualistic. I got thinking about playing on ritual and I recalled all of the films I have seen and stories I had read where people voted with black and white stones or had to draw stones to determine their fate. This was something I thought I could use in my game. It reinforced a certain mood and was something that wouldn't have problems with light, wind, or rain. To top it all off, there are plenty of stones available outside at a campground or park. It would be a simple matter to gather up some dark and light stones for a game if nobody thought ahead to bring something to use. I decided to go with drawing stones as a mechanic and used a simple system where black equaled a negative result and white a positive one. Easy to teach and understand, which was perfect for the kind of impromptu setting this game would be for.

I now had all of these ritualistic and borderline spooky game mechanics. I decided to go for broke and make it a horror game. I suppose it could be played in any genre, but ghost stories have a long tradition of being told around a campfire so it really all fit together rather nicely. I wrote the rules with that in mind and added advice for playing the game that kept the art of the campfire ghost story in mind. The only thing left that I really needed was a title that fit the game I had created. I decided to go with By Firelight. I think that the reason I went with that title is pretty self explanatory.

I wanted to capture that feeling of telling creepy stories and turn it into a game and I think I’ve managed to do that. I have posted the draft of By Firelight on Google Docs where anyone can read it. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Categories: By Firelight, Game Design, reddit, RPG

A Dwarf loadout for a game that doesn’t exist.

Just as the topic says. Remember that role playing card game I mused about several months ago? I kept thinking about it and produced enough cards to make a sample character loadout. What you see above is a loadout for a stereotypical Dwarf character.

Based on the card layout for this character our dwarf has:

• 2 Strength
• 3 Toughness
• 1 Dexterity
• 1 Wisdom
• 1 Intelligence
• 1 Charisma

If you’ve read those previous posts you would know that these stats are derived from the colour of the cards used in the loadout. That means that if you add up all of the values it should equal 9. Thus, all characters must have a value between 0 and 9 for each attribute. That’s pretty straightforward, I think.

The question is, what are these attributes used for? In a nutshell, they relate to the Hit Deck. A communal deck of cards made up of 9 suits, each matching an attribute. Depending on what your character is doing their attribute could affect anything to the number of cards they get to draw to a bonus to the card value. Typically it’s going to be card draw. If our dwarf wanted to kick down a door, for example, the GM would have them draw a number of cards equal to their Strength attribute +1 (since you can’t draw 0 cards). They get to use the card with the highest value for their attempt to knock down the door. To further complicate things, there is a system of trumps. Basically, every attribute has one other attribute that trumps it and counts as a straight up failure if used. I haven’t figured out the trump relationships at this point.

If you look through the cards you might notice a few other things I haven’t previously talked about. I make reference to wound types on some of those cards. The way I envision injuries working in this game would be that the GM has a stack of wound cards of different types. He tosses those out to characters/monsters as needed. I feel that this is one of the strengths of using a card-based system. You can have the granularity of different types of injuries without having to look rarely used rules. What you need is printed on the card that has handily been placed next to your character.

I don’t believe I’ve spent much time talking about the difference between Ancestry, Ability, and Equipment cards either. Mechanically, it comes down to how they are swapped in and out of your character loadout. Ancestry cards can never be swapped out unless something drastic happens like a polymorph spell or disownment. Ability cards require retraining of some kind to change and Equipment cards can be moved in and out on a character’s turn. Fluff wise there are some differences, but I’m sure you can work those details out on your own.

I think the cards are pretty self-explanatory and give an idea of how I imagine this game playing out. I think it’s worth noting that a player could easily mix and match cards from different loadouts to quickly and easily create all kinds of different characters.

That pretty much does it for now. I don’t know how much further I’ll pursue this idea. It seems like fun to me, but I’m not sure if it really appeals to anyone other than me. I might post up some card templates so that anyone could make their own cards. If you want to see more of this then let me know.

Categories: Card Games, Game Design, RPCG

Magic Eight-balls as a Game Mechanic

Did you know that the piece inside a magic eight-ball that produces an answer when you shake it is a dodecahedron? I didn't and when I found out that it was a twenty-sided die I was inspired to come up with an RPG that uses a magic eight-ball, or that at least approximates one with a d20 table.

Using an eight-ball as an oracle

There is an interesting game called Mythic that, instead of using a GM or placing narrative duties on the players, uses an oracle mechanic. The way it works is that players ask questions about what is happening (Is there anything in the woods? Yes, something dangerous. Is it a monster? Yes.) and the oracle responds with an answer. They have to be questions that can be answered with a Yes or a No and the players use these answers in combination with random tables to determine what happens in the game.

It seems to me that I could do something similar with a magic eight-ball. Players consult the magic eight-ball with yes/no questions and it responds.

What kind of game would use a mechanic like this?

In my mind there is only one setting that could use such a strange mechanic: corporate offices. I imagine a comedy game in which the players are workers in an office. I'm imagining an office environment like Better Off Ted, You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here and similar takes. A game filled with nonsensical business decisions, weird characters and general hilarity.

The Magic Eight Ball is used whenever communicating with Upper Management. If you need to ask for something, get a ruling, or find out if some alternative is an option then you work it into a yes/no question and shake the eight-ball. The resulting phrase is what management has to say on the matter.

Categories: d20, Game Design, Idea, magic eightball, The RPG Office, Weird Corporate

Foundation: a kingdom-building rpg (idea)

I have always loved the kingdom and city building elements of video games like Suikoden and Actraiser. There is something compelling about searching out people to fill your city, managing the day to day conflicts and the dealing with politics and war. It is something I really enjoy, but aside from a few supplements it's also something I rarely see in the tabletop RPG world.

I remember the Birthright setting for D&D, but it seems to have slipped away into obscurity. Birthright doesn't seem to have had the staying power that other D&D settings, like Plansecape or Spelljammer, did. Then there is Reign, but while that game does have some great rules for player organizations it doesn't have the kind of focus that I'm interested in.

The popularity of the Kingmaker Adventure Path shows that I'm not the only one that thinks this style of play is fun. I got to thinking, "How would I make an RPG focused around this kind of play?"

Concept

A game in which the players build up their own fantasy city/country/kingdom from the ground up. Each player controls a Founder or Leader (if no Founders are left living). A founder is only as good as their followers and throughout the game the players will regularly role play as both their Founder and the followers that work under their Founder. Additionally, players will also have opportunity to role play as a follower of one of the other founders under certain circumstances. The followers a Founder gathers affect the skills and abilities that are mechanically available to a founder.

Design Goals

1. To capture the fun of city building and kingdom politics while maintaining an easy to use/learn system.
2. To provide a fun game for both players that want to build a mighty utopia and play through the obstacles towards that goal as well as allowing for political conflict for players that want to play something a little... sleazier.
3. Provide mechanics for conflict between other cities/kingdoms as well as internal conflict, either between players (founder) or NPC factions.

Some Rough Ideas

This game is strictly in the "batting around ideas" phase. What follows are some of the things I have been thinking about.

Player Characters as Founders

For me, at least, I see this game beginning when the player characters stake out some territory and found their new city. In Foundation each of the players takes on the role of one of the founders of a new settlement/city/kingdom/etc.

A Founder would be made up of a few key elements, but the most important of these are their Background, Influence and Entourage.

Background

Unlike with a lot of RPGs where player characters start out as relative unknowns the Founders have already made a name for themselves. They already have the necessary fame or infamy to gather people for their cause. Think of their Background as being a package that sums up their career to this point. It's equal parts character class and back story.

An example Background might be "War Hero" or "Noble". Backgrounds could give the character some abilities or starting stats. I might throw in some more narrative mechanics into the background by giving each Background some blanks that need to be filled in. For example, a War Hero would have to define the war, where it happened and if they were on the winning side. I could see this working something like Apocalypse World's Hx or Fate's Aspects. I could also imagine using some random tables with the Backgrounds that work like a limited lifepath, something like what you see with Traveller's Careers. This is definitely something that needs some more thought.

Influence
Influence is a currency stat. It would be used during play to make things happen. I see Influence as a stat that powers a Founder's abilities and can also be directed towards different factions and goals. For example, if a Founder has 10 Influence they might decide to spend 3 of it towards the Ranger's Guild, 4 to Bankers and the remaining 3 to Public Relations. This influence could be slid around during the course of play and provides bonuses/re-rolls when dealing with those factions/goals.

Entourage
The Entourage is the meat of any Founder.  Founders didn't just get up one day and decide they would build a community from the ground up. They are powerful and influential people with a history. An Entourage includes all of the Followers that are at the disposal of a Founder.

While part of an Entourage a Follower grants skills and abilities to their Founder. For example, a thief's knack for procuring items grants their Founder the ability to pickpocket while a mage allows for the casting of spells.  A Founder that has a bodyguard in the Entourage has increased physical capabilities to overcome challenges (or rather, they have someone to overcome it for them). A bodyguard might also give them the "take a hit" ability which would allow the player to sacrifice the bodyguard so that their Founder can avoid death.

Followers are not always part of the Entourage. There are times when a Founder may assign a Quest (more on this in a bit) to one of their followers and when they do that follower must leave the Entourage in order to accomplish it. If a follower leaves an Entourage then any skills/abilities granted by their presence are lost until their return.

This size of the Entourage should be limited and increasing the size of the Entourage is one of two "leveling" mechanics in Foundation. (The second is increasing the size of the city/kingdom.)

Multiple Characters for Each Player

Taking a page from Ars Magica's book, Foundation has players to take ownership and play from the veiwpoint of any of the characters in their Founder's Entourage. A Founder doesn't leave their city to track down some magical item or a skilled artisan, they send one of their trusted followers. At this point the game could change to that character's viewpoint and players could enjoy a dungeon crawl or just RP out a quick scene.

Not every group is going to like switching the focus like this. In fact, maybe the players want to keep things at the macro level. That's no problem, if I include some tables for players to get an idea of how one of their followers does on a quest then that should allow for quick resolution for those that want it.

City/Kingdom as a Character

The city/kingdom should be treated like a shared player character. It should have its own set of stats and abilities determined by its demographics and physical makeup. Founders could spend Influence to activate abilities.

Ideas

• Unrest as a stat. This would probably be a percentage and would be determined by events and actions of the Founders. Unrest rolls would be rolled regularly and if the roll falls within the Unrest % then something bad happens. (Maybe there should be an Unrest table that could be used to generate a random Unrest event?)
• Buildings and Factions each grant abilities to the city. A cathedral might allow for a Holy Day ability that could be used to lower Unrest.

Player "Generated" Starting Map

I think it would be a lot of fun to have the players generate the map that their city is founded on. This could be done using a set of hexes with players taking turns rolling on a table and then placing elements in a desired hex. Things to place could be resources, points of interest, threats (monsters/rival settlements/bandit camps/etc.) and geographical features. I could look to How to Host a Dungeon and Dawn of Worlds for inspiration on how to put this together.

Passage of Time

The game should proceed in rounds, with each round representing a chunk of time. The players should probably decide on how much time to start with, but I think either 1 month or 1 season would be a good place to start at.

For each of these chunks of time the players decide what their Founders want to do. That might be trying to make connections with a certain guild, expanding their Kingdom's borders or even trying to lure someone important to their city. In addition, for each one of these rounds some rolls should be made. The first would be the Unrest Roll discussed above and the second should be on a Random Events Table that would have things on it like "besieged by goblins" or "crime wave". These events would create obstacles for the Founders to overcome or risk the Unrest rising. Of course, not all events should be negative. There could be windfalls, important people joining the settlement and other positive results.

GM?   

This one has me a bit stumped. Should this game be GMless or should it have someone in the traditional role of storyteller/game master? It wouldn't be hard to tweak Influence to work as a narrative currency like you see in games like Universalis. It might also work to have the GM role switch to a different Founder for each Round. This one definitely requires more mulling over.

Afterthoughts

Phew. That was quite the brain-dump. I really do like the idea of this game, but I don't know if all of these ideas fit together as snuggly as I would like them to. I definitely need to let this game bounce around in my head for a while and see what happens with it.

Categories: Foundation, Game Design, Idea, RPG

Quick mock-up of a Role Playing Card Game card.

I know I said that I wouldn’t play around with my role playing card game (RPCG) until I finished up my revision of In Between, but I just couldn’t help myself.

Here is a mock-up of what one of the Persona Cards might look like.

I think I’ve missed my true calling in life: art. 

Apart from the terrible art and questionable graphic design skills what’s going on here exactly? Well, let’s start from the top and work our way down.

First off you’ll notice that the card is red. Various colors represent different attributes. In this case that attribute is STRENGTH. Don’t worry, I’ve considered colourblind players. You see that tiny little icon at the top? It’s supposed to look like a muscely bicep. It’s there as a secondary way of telling what attribute the card is linked to. I’ll talk more about attributes at some later point in time. For now, just know that they exist.

Next up is the title of the card. That would be Orc Hatred. That’s pretty straightforward, as is the the stick-art below.

Now we reach the good stuff. In the text box you’ll see the bolded word ANCESTRY on the right. That’s to tell us that it is an Ancestry TYPE card. That’s important for random character creation and also for any other cards that might affect Ancestry cards. There are other Types as well. Right now they are limited to 3 types for Persona cards. That is Ancestry, Ability, and Equipment. As an aside, Persona cards are those that make up a player’s character . Character cards just sounded kind of boring so I decided to use Persona instead.

Beneath the TYPE is the RULES TEXT. This is the meat of a card. It has some role playing information which I think is really important to help drive home that this is a RPG and not a competitive card game. Following that is the actual mechanics aspect. In this case it talks about TRUMPS. Trumps are going to be a major part of the resolution system. Everything has a trump, think of it like rock-paper-scissors. Rock trumps paper which trumps scissors which trumps rock. Only in this case everything has a positive and negative trump which for the sake of simplicity we will equate to Critical Success and Critical Failure. Essentially what this card is saying is that if you’re fighting an orc and you roll a 1 you treat it like a 10 OR if you are negotiating with an orc and you roll a 20 then you treat it like a 10. Trumping and resolution is a bit more complicated than that, but this post isn’t about that. I’ll talk about the resolution system some other time.

That’s everything that is on this card. There is room for more information and some of the non-persona cards do have other stuff on them. Monster/NPC/Challenge cards, for example, require attribute information as they aren’t built out of 9 separate cards. This will be represented by colored symbols.

That’s enough about this game for now. If you’ve got a (relevant) opinion I’d love to hear it.

Categories: Card Games, Game Design, Idea, In Progress, RGCG